But Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei used the occasion to post
an English-subtitled video on his website, which questioned
whether the Holocaust happened at all.

The three-minute video is called "Are
the Dark Ages Over?" and features
audio of a March 2014 speech, during which the Iranian leader
claimed, "No one in European countries dares to speak about the
Holocaust, while it is not clear whether the core of this matter
is reality or not. Even if it is reality, it is not clear how it
happened."

The video also showed images of prominent European Holocaust
deniers, including British historian
David Irving.

Iran's revolutionary regime has included some outspoken deniers
and revisionists, to the point at which skepticism or
flat-out denial of the historic nature of the
Holocaust has often appeared to be an official
Iranian-government position.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani was
notably evasive and equivocal in discussing the
genocide during a 2013 CNN interview. And in 2006, current
Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif, considered one of the
regime's most influential moderates, refused to say
whether he personally believed 6 million Jews had been murdered
in the Holocaust when the question was directly posed to him
during an event at Columbia University.

Earlier this month, most international and US sanctions on Iran
were lifted as a result of the July 2015 nuclear deal, a
development that
paves the way for multibillion-dollar trade deals and even a
degree of diplomatic normalization between Iran and
Western nations. Rouhani has visited Italy
and France this
week.

Khamenei's message, however, shows that the thaw has
had little impact on some of the least-savory aspects of the
regime and its ideology.